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• Interview with Ms. Mahle

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Tavis: Melissa Boyle Mahle is a former CIA field officer who served as a clandestine operative--I think that means secretive--in places like the Middle East for over 10 years. Her new book offers a rare glimpse into the inner workings of America's spy agency. The book is called "Denial and Deception: An Insider's View of the CIA from Iran-Contra to 9/11." Melissa, nice to have you with us.

Melissa Boyle Mahle: Thank you for having me.

Tavis: Glad to have you here. Let me start by asking you, the big news of the last few days, John Negroponte, President Bush's choice to be the National Intelligence Czar, an improvement?

Melissa: Yeah, you know, really with Negroponte and his new deputy Hayden, it's the dream team for the intelligence community, two people with very different backgrounds, different capabilities. And I think they're going to be able to be a force to be reckoned with, and that's what we need.

Tavis: Right. Tell me how you--I wanna start with how you--I'm always fascinated by anybody who works for the CIA, but particularly you know, a woman who has blond hair and blue eyes. How did you end up working for the CIA?

Melissa: Well, you know, it wasn't by design, I have to admit. I didn't grow up wishing that I would be a spy, but I needed a job, and they walked in my life one day and said, "How about a life of intrigue and foreign travel?" and I thought, that sounds great. And it wasn't until after I was inside and signed on the line of the secrecy agreement that I realized I was going to be recruiting and handling spies.

Tavis: Mm-hmm. Tell me about--And obviously, there's certain things you cannot talk about, even though you've written this book. Tell me about what you did inside the CIA, the department you worked for, what kind of work you were about.

Melissa: Yeah. You know, I did the super-secret stuff that people write spy novels about. I worked in the Directive Operations, and that's our overseas arm, so I lived overseas, and I used different identities, and I would find people that had access to intelligence that the U.S. government wanted. I'd get to know them. I'd befriend them. I'd convince them to commit espionage on behalf of the U.S. government, and then after I recruited them, I would handle them, get that intelligence.

Tavis: Mmm. You say this with such a smile on your face. Ha ha ha ha! I'm trying to figure--I'm trying to figure out--I mean, obviously you're very believable. You did your work rather well. Did you ever have any misgivings about the fact that you could do what you're doing now, which is sit here and charm me and get information? You don't feel bad about this?

Melissa: You know, it sounds so easy, you know, as I roll off my tongue what you do, but it's not easy. It's a terr--It's a terrific challenge. And did I have second feelings? No. You know, what I have to say, when you save Americans' lives, you know that you've made a really big impact, and that's something I did, and I took a lot of satisfaction--first of all, satisfaction, personal satisfaction from my work. And there are times, you know, you put people's lives under risk, not only your own, but your agents' lives, and that's a big responsibility, and I never took it lightly.

Tavis: As you well know--And I respect the fact that you never took your work lightly, but as you well know, when you say those three letters, certainly nowadays, C-I-A, not the best reputation. People don't immediately think, what a wonderful agency saving Americans' lives.

Melissa: Well, you know, I didn't have to deal with that when I was inside the CIA, because I never said I worked for the CIA. I never told anybody until after I left. But you know, the agency does have a mixed reputation, and I think people tend to talk about the failures more than the successes. In this book, I tried to write a book that had both the successes and the failures, but the CIA systematically censored out the--all the success stories.

Tavis: What was the, um--What was the movie? Was it "True Lies" with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis, husband and wife couple who were both spies? So when you said earlier that you never talked about the fact that you worked for the CIA, clearly I understand why. You were undercover. Who in your world, in your universe, knew what you really did for a living?

Melissa: Very small. My husband knew, and my father knew.

Tavis: That was it?

Melissa: And that was it?

Tavis: Your friends, nobody knew?

Melissa: No. I lived a lie for a large portion of my life.

Tavis: So, what'd you tell your friends, like, what you were doing every day?

Melissa: Well, I mean, I had--Depended what my cover was for that moment of time. And frankly, my family and friends didn't think I could hold a job, because it would change, and I'd have to say, "Well, now I'm doing this," and they'd look at me and say, "Why did you--Didn't you like what you were doing before?" But you know, that comes with the territory, and you get used to it, and unfortunately you get used to hiding a very large portion of your life from people that you love.

Tavis: Let me ask you a really personal question. How do you--I mean, your father and husband knew, but how does one navigate and--and consider friendships that are to a certain extent, pardon the phrase, pardon the word, a lie. I mean, I'm your friend. I expect you to be truthful with me. I know that there's--I mean, obviously you can't tell me what you're doing, but if I'm your friend, I mean, come on, Melissa, I don't want to think that I know you, and I really don't know you.

Melissa: You know, it's very difficult. And one of the hard things--this doesn't apply to me, but one of the real hard things is when you tell your kids that all of your life you've been lying to your kids. "And, oh, by the way, I actually am a CIA spy," you know. When you come to that moment in time, it's hard, and people question the foundation of your relationship, but you know, especially it's important to explain why and that there was--"I'm not lying to you for my personal gain or for--you know, to get some laughs. I did it because I needed to keep my identity secret to save people's lives."

Tavis: I had a friend of mine who used to tell his girlfriends he worked for the CIA, and he told all kind of lies around that, but that's another story. Ha ha ha ha! That was his cover, and it worked for him pretty well. I marked this part in the book, 'cause I wanted--Jonathan, can you get--I'm gonna go straight to camera one here. I want to show the audience. You wrote this book, and because you did do such a secret, top-secret job, when you wrote this book, it had to be passed through the CIA for clearance, and there's certain passages in this book--This is a long passage. There are other passages where there's just a single word that the CIA said, "OK, the book can be printed, but these sections, these words have to be blotted out." So I tried to hold these things up to the light, to see if I could read what was there, but, um, did that--How much--How'd you navigate your way through that process?

Melissa: You know, it took me a year to get the book cleared, and about 20% of my manuscript did not make it into the book, so--But you can't see that, because I rewrote the text. These black lines are where the CIA got cold feet just as the book was going to press and said, "No, you can't print that," and that's why you see those black lines.

Tavis: Talk to me about the challenge, 2 specific challenges I'm interested in. Let me start with the one of your being a female. Talk to me about the challenges specifically that women face working for the CIA.

Melissa: Well, it's a man's world. Let's be very honest, and all the senior management, they're all male, and I had to overcome a lot of presumptions that I would fail in order to get my job in the first place and to work in the Middle East, and so it was a continual battle, and, you know, I did well. I was highly ranked, very successful, and I spoke Arabic, and I was a good recruiter, so you kept on having to prove people you could actually do your job and demand the opportunity. In terms of working in the Middle East, I found it actually to be quite easy. People said, "Oh, a woman can never recruit an Arab." No, that's not true at all.

Tavis: That ain't just a woman, but again, an American woman, with blond hair, again, and blue eyes--back to that again--and you're working in the Middle East.

Melissa: Well, let me tell you, I'm very non-threatening when you look at me, and how can I possibly look dangerous? I could talk to anybody I wanted to, and that's half the battle. If they don't talk to you, how can you recruit them?

Tavis: Mm-hmm.

Melissa: So, I was very successful in that.

Tavis: No, you're right. I don't feel threatened sitting across from you. Heh heh heh!

Melissa: I left my ninja suit at home. Heh heh.

Tavis: Heh heh heh! I hope you don't feel threatened by me. Let me ask your assessment--Again, there's a whole book written about this, but in the short time that I have, talk to me about looking back on it now, what was going wrong inside of the CIA, all the failures, all the lapses, all the misses that led to 9/11.

Melissa: You know, what happened in the 1990s, it was not the best decade from the CIA. We suffered from growing risk aversion, for a variety of reasons, you know, sometimes wrongdoing, things that we did ourselves, or other--just the climate at the time that Washington was risk-averse. We had some major flaks--flaps, we had spy scandals, and there was a sense in Washington that intelligence wasn't really important and other agencies could do better, such as law enforcement agencies. And so as the CIA's prestige declined, the willingness to take risks declined, and so for 9/11, what that meant was that we weren't getting down and dirty and doing the really hard parts of our jobs of getting to know, to infiltrate these very closed societies, and to uncover these plots as they were brewing.

Tavis: There's some folk who argue, though, that to do that effectively, the CIA has to really get down and dirty, and there's part of our culture, certainly after Abu Ghraib and other incidents like that, of Guantanamo Bay, the incidents down there, there are a number of people who want us to be--a number of Americans who want us to be safe, but want there to be a balance between being safe and scrupulous, as it were, doing the work you all need to do without getting too down and too dirty. Is that possible?

Melissa: Yes, it is. You know, I think the public debate right now is very important about what's--what are acceptable methods and what are not. And certainly we look at the photographs from Abu Ghraib--And, you know, even I--I look at that, and you know what I say--what I see? I say, "My God, we're torturing people that have no--that are of no intelligence value. Why are we doing this?" And so, we're expending our standing, our clout on something we shouldn't have been doing in the first place. But you have to be able to be willing to associate with terrorists if you want to recruit a terrorist.

Tavis: In 30 seconds, tell me right quick how the CIA can get back the credibility some think it has lost.

Melissa: It's got to get it right. In Iran, we're looking at W.M.D. We've got to get it absolutely right. We've got to recruit agents on the ground, and we have to be able to take a hard look at the intelligence coming out.

Tavis: The book is "Denial and Deception: An Insider's View of the CIA from Iran-Contra to 9/11," written by Melissa Boyle Mahle. You'll enjoy it, and I'm sure you'll be like me, holding up to the light, trying to read those parts that are blacked out. You'll see if you can really figure it out. Melissa, nice to have you on the program, and thanks for the courage to put this out so we can hopefully better understand what happens on the inside of the CIA.

Melissa: And that was my aim. Thank you very much.

Tavis: You did it well. Thank you very much for coming on. Up next on this program, gospel great BeBe Winans. It's been four years since BeBe put out a studio CD, and we'll talk to the one and only BeBe Winans in just a moment. Stay with us.